
learning from experienced colleagues & solving problems together
co-operation with experienced engineers (less so with the recent hires)
personal working relationships make up to some extent for the corporate diktats.
Treat employees like humans - their concrete work pays for your wages, after all. Arbitrarily set goals at company level are too abstract - not correlated with individual jobs. Hunting down profits & cost cutting at the expense of work-life balance - who likes having working at night?
"unlimited PTO" means nothing when managers are dead set on 3 weeks (less than the 20 PTO days pre-2011) wage has not kept up with cost of living/inflation No compensation (time off or monetary) for out-of-usual-hours work - late evening/early morning that break the work/life balance for some.